Fantasy author John Wiswell explains the ‘Tetris method’ that can keep you productive in 2025
Estimated reading time: 15 minutes
Talking to Nebula-winning fantasy author John Wiswell about the things he loves is a little overwhelming, because of the boundless energy he brings to the table. Whether he’s talking about his 2024 debut novel Someone You Can Build a Nest In (a cozy fantasy widely featured on best-of-the-year lists, including ours), the other books he loves and helps promote, writing neurodivergent and disabled characters as a way to be seen, or the craft of writing itself, he’s endlessly enthusiastic. After years of trying to get started as a writer, that energy has paid off, with one novel in stores, a second on the way in 2025, and a rapid run of short stories published at outlets all over the web, including the Nebula winner “Open House on Haunted Hill” and the Locus Award winner “That Story Isn’t the Story.” (More links below, throughout this interview.)
Wiswell always seems to have half a dozen projects in the works, so he was a logical person to reach out to at the beginning of the year, when people are most thinking about productivity, new projects, and setting goals. Polygon asked him for advice about how to stay focused, finish projects, and beat writer’s block. We were surprised when he explained that one of his biggest tricks was “the Tetris method.”
This interview has been edited for concision and clarity.
Polygon: Are you a New Year’s resolution person? Do you have a different way of setting goals for yourself?
John Wiswell: I have never been a New Year’s resolution person. I think it’s a great form for other people. I tend to have goals that pop up at other times of the year, and then I just try to stick to them. So I had a goal to publish as a novelist, and if that was my New Year’s resolution, I sure failed, like for 13 years or something! And I think my first piece of advice, frankly, to anybody is: Be ready for it to be OK that you don’t nail it. 100% success is a very mean resolution to put upon yourself, and it’s a great way to throw your resolution away. On the first Tuesday of the year, when you don’t write, Well, I was going to write every day! I guess the year’s over now! That’s not fair to yourself. And I think we’ve all been there.
We’ve all had that one discouragement where you’re like, Ah, I’m never going to be any good! Well, nobody’s good at the violin the first day they pick it up! You practice! We hit the track to get a better time eventually. I certainly am not doing my best time on the elliptical right now, but I’m going to keep doing it. So I have things I’m very much looking forward to doing in the next year. I’m probably going to start writing a brand-new book shortly. I have a bunch of short stories I want to write next year. I have a lot of people who I want to spend some time with next year, because the older I get, the more important certain people are to me, and I want them to be a part of my life. That’s a funny thing to make a goal out of, but time gets away from us.
So be open to revising a goal in a reasonable way: OK, I can’t write every day. Can I write every weekday morning? Can I write Saturdays and Sundays? Or if you’ve never finished anything, maybe a really good goal is, Well, I’d like to try to finish something this year, whether it’s finishing a short story, an entire novel, or just getting to the end of anything. It doesn’t matter if you think what you wrote doesn’t work: Finishing something for the first time is an amazing achievement.
Most writers don’t get there. You gotta pat yourself on the back when you do hit some of these things. I feel like in addition to beating themselves up, people often don’t give themselves the credit for getting somewhere that’s really meaningful. The first short story I finished was not very good, and I was very mean to myself about it. Now I look back and I’m like, But you don’t get to any of the other ones if you don’t do that one!
I think it’s better to look at a project as, That was another day in the gym. That was another day running around the track. Give yourself credit for getting out there and trying to do the work. And then try to give yourself rest! If I had a New Year’s resolution, it’d probably be to pace myself. I have multiple disabilities, and I really ran myself into the ground with my book launch in 2024. I loved everything I got to do, but I really physically hurt myself doing it.
And so going into a second year as a published novelist, I’m still going to try to do a lot, but I’m also going to try to be a little more mindful of my limits, so I don’t burn myself out too fast. So I can be there, whether it’s for another book event, or for my nephew after he gets home from school.
You’re very prolific for someone trying to pace yourself! How do you maintain the energy to keep jumping into new writing projects, to keep pitching and submitting?
The first trick is, I only write short stories where some character or part of it really excites me. So if it seems like an important thing to write, but it’s not exciting, I’ll put it on the back burner and maybe come back to that idea later and see if it excites me. If I think, I want to write a story about a dragon who runs for mayor, and gosh darn it, that’s just so funny to me, I’ve got to write that. I really wanted to write a story in the fairy-tale style that did lots of time skips, but never had a scene break. I just really wanted to try that. And then I got to Someone You Can Build a Nest In — that was very emotional for me, and that was great to explore, so the first draft didn’t take that long, because it was all coming out of a period of excitement.
The other thing is, I’ve written so many short stories now that I know my habits. I know I can probably do one in a day or two. Do I have a period in my schedule that’s about that wide to write a first draft? And what is that gap? If I need to write half a novel this month, and there’ll be a two-day gap, and then I’m going to be teaching for four weeks; I should take that two days off.
You got to take care of yourself. But if there’s a gap in the schedule where I’m not going to have to do that much — some of us lift ourselves up by writing comedy. Some of us get a lot of release from writing really grimdark stuff. I keep my output high by looking for work that will enliven me, or actually help me settle, and it does reset the mind. Sometimes I’m just looking for shorter projects that will switch my mind to something else, so I’ll be in a different emotional state than I have been. I guess you’d call that another trick.
My biggest thing, though, is that I just really love short stories. So it’s not that much of an encumbrance, because it’s really fun to fall in love with another 3,000-word idea. I love the form, I love to read it, and I do love to write it.
It’s funny that you think my output is high — I feel like I’ve been slacking off. I think everybody does that to themselves — I did X, but it should have been X times two. No matter what you did. It’s like, Oh, I got my best time ever at the track, but it should have been faster.
Do you ever get blocked? And if you do, what’s your strategy?
I don’t think writer’s block is one size fits all. I’ve encountered three kinds. One is burnout, and undiagnosed burnout is the worst kind of writer’s block, because you try to work through it and make it worse. And in those cases, I examine the idea and try to write it from different angles. I play with the voice. If I’m like, Huh, nothing here is wrong with these ingredients, I ask, Is something wrong with me? Am I emotionally off? Am I just exhausted?
If the problem’s in me, then it’s not in the work. I save all of my notes and I’m like, All right, come back to this later and let’s work on ourselves in the meantime. Sometimes the problem is in the work — I started the story, but it turns out I feel like I’m the wrong person to be writing it.
I don’t like to be appropriative. So I’ll maybe put the work aside. Other times, something about the work is off — I’m telling it from the wrong point of view, or I keep trying to make it a comedy and it’s not actually as funny as I thought it was. So I try engaging with the same idea seriously: Let’s do a drama about this. Maybe the blockage is that I am looking at it from the wrong angle. The last kind of blockage is, you write yourself into a corner, which a lot of people really dread. But I kind of love it. I think it’s because I grew up playing Tetris: I really like playing the game of “How do I rotate this plot element or this voice until it fits into the story?”
It’s a funny household-chore way of looking at writing. But it really is like cleaning out the trash bin, or playing Dr. Mario. OK, I’m stuck, but what angle do I need to turn this to for it to make sense? Do I need to flip it around? Maybe I make the thing that is a problem for me into a problem for the character, and then the drama is them solving it. Or maybe we pivot, and these two characters who have been opposed need to become allies in order for them both to get through it, but that’ll make the problems worse for them on the other side.
Solving a writing problem by figuring out the angle, that’s the most fun way to beat writer’s block. So now when I get stuck, I actually get a little dopamine. I actually get a little excited. Because I gamified solving plot problems — that’s so much easier than getting over burnout.
You’re so active on so many social media platforms — how do you deal with distractions? How do you deal with the desire to spend your whole day interacting with fans instead of writing?
Yeah, there’s a lot of appeal to being on social media, and to some degree, it feels like your job — you have to go get attention for your work, or you need to establish a brand, which feels disgusting to an artist, right? But there’s a compulsion to be there, and there’s a lot of fun to it. And I could talk to people about my books, or other people’s books, or about storytelling all day. Sometimes I just have to close the browser, and it’s not allowed to be open again until I get a certain amount done.
Other times I just give myself permission — This is the time of the year where I should be engaging more. The month my next book comes out, I’m going to be on socials more. I think that’s part of the job. And also, man. If people took time out of their day to be like, “I just read your new book that came out eight hours ago, and I’m done, and I love it,” I want to take a minute and be like, “Dude, thank you. You made my day. This is awesome.” I want to both enjoy it and show gratitude, because that’s such a generous thing to do.
So I do tend to block out a little time in my daily schedule to respond to fan email, or to be on socials, and to try to be positive — or constructive, if not positive. I’m also somewhat outspoken on politics, but I try to be practical about “Here’s a thing we can actually do, rather than just despair,” because we can all despair on our own. What can I do, or what can we do? It feels like an important part of a social life. Social media isn’t just there for me to talk about books — it lets me be part of a community. And living in the middle of the woods, that does mean a lot to me.
How do you know when it’s time to let a project go and move on?
At the beginning, I didn’t know, and that was disastrous. So I’d hold on to a half-finished book for years and not move to the next thing. I’m going to finish this! I’m going to perfect this! It’s going to get better! Over time, deadlines helped. I had a great teacher in college who heard about my problems of self-sabotage and self-censorship, and she said, “You need to work at an ad agency, because if you can’t turn in eight pitches by the end of the day at an ad agency, they just fire you.” I was like, “Oh, right. You need deadlines!” So I have tried over time to create habits of “get it to a workable state by the end of the week, or move on.”
I don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good. You can always set a project aside and come back later. Taking time away from your first draft is also very helpful, rather than tinkering endlessly. I’ll put something I’m struggling with in a folder and I’ll come back in a month and see if I still like it. So I’m not in an endless emotional cycle. Putting some systems of distance and deadlines into place — those will change for every person, and will change as the person develops more skills and habits, but they’re lifesavers. Without them, I might still just be staring at the same Word document from 1998.
